Bamboo, Transparent and Fire/Water-Resistant, Offers Glass Alternative
Scientists in China have created a transparent material from old bamboo, which is resistant to fire, water, and smoke suppression. However, silica glass, a sand-based building material, commonly serves as transparent, strong windows, but it lacks sustainability and can be heavy and brittle.
Exploring Bamboo as an Alternative to Transparent Wood
Transparent wood has been encroaching on glass’s territory for some years now. Scientists extract lignin chemically from wood fibers, and then treat the remaining material with plexiglass or epoxy. The outcome is a material that is transparent, renewable, and as strong as, if not stronger than, glass, while also being lighter and offering superior thermal insulation.
However, using wood still presents a few challenges. It is considerably more flammable than glass and is already in high demand, with replenishment taking too long. Thus, for their recent study, researchers at Central South University of Forestry and Technology (CSUFT) in China turned to bamboo.
“Bamboo, often dubbed ‘the second forest,’ grows rapidly and regenerates quickly, allowing it to mature and be utilized as a building material within four to seven years,” explained Caichao Wan, the study’s corresponding author. “With an output four times higher than wood per acre, bamboo is acknowledged for its remarkable efficiency.”
Since bamboo’s internal structure and chemical composition closely resemble wood, the team employed the same method to render it transparent. After removing lignin, researchers infuse bamboo with an inorganic liquid sodium silicate, altering the light refraction of the fibers to achieve transparency. Subsequently, they treat the material to impart hydrophobic properties, making it water-repellent.
Transparent Bamboo: A Multi-Functional Building Material with Enhanced Solar Cell Efficiency
The resulting structure consists of three layers: silane on the top, silicon dioxide in the middle, and sodium silicate at the bottom. “This transparent bamboo exhibits a light transmittance of 71.6% and possesses flame-retardant and water-repellent properties, while also blocking smoke and carbon monoxide. Its mechanical properties include a bending modulus of 7.6 GPa and a tensile modulus of 6.7 GPa.”
Moreover, transparent bamboo can serve not only as a building material but also as a substrate for perovskite solar cells, enhancing their power conversion efficiency by 15.29% as a light management layer.
“In future research, our focus will be on the large-scale production and multifunctionalization of this transparent bamboo,” stated Wan.
Read the Original Article on: New Atlas
Read more: Sea-Bed Air Batteries Offer Affordable, Long-Term Energy Storage
